Section A: General information › cms › images › vacatures › Full...Section A: General information A1. Administrative details 1a. Main applicant Title(s), initials(s), surname

Section A: General information A1. Administrative details

1a. Main applicant Title(s), initials(s), surname prof. dr. N. van der Sijs Affiliation Meertens Institute / Radboud University, Dept

Modern Languages and Cultures Postal address Postal/zip code City

Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185 1012 DK Amsterdam

Email address [email protected] Telephone number 030-2522172 Birth date 01 / 04 / 1955 Date PhD defence 20 / 11 / 2001 Position full professor Type of appointment permanent End of contract date official retirement date 1/7/2022, but Meertens

Institute guarantees an appointment till the end date of the proposed project [official letter in appendix]

1c. Title Spread the new(s). Understanding standardization of Dutch through 17th-century newspapers 1d. Summary: max. 250 words, and list max. five keywords In the first half of the 17th century, writers and grammarians formulated tentative prescriptive rules for a Dutch standard language. According to Haugen's model of standardisation (1966) this means that they selected and codified the form of the standard language. During the 17th century the standard language was elaborated for use in all domains and by all social classes. Up until now the factors determining its functional expansion have not been systematically investigated, largely because of a lack of relevant research data. The project Spread the new(s) proposes to study the elaboration and acceptance of the Dutch standard language, based on a completely new, unique text corpus of manually transcribed 17th-century newspapers, containing 17 million words. The main research question is: What (socio)linguistic factors are decisive in the functional implementation of a standard language? We hypothesize that newspapers played a crucial role in the expansion of the standard languageas the first mass medium read by all social classes. By comparing newspapers with fiction, non-fiction, religious texts and letters written by different social classes, we will be able to determine which factors were responsible for spreading the Dutch standard language and what the role of newspapers was. The timing for this project is fortuitous: theoretical models of standardization and historical sociolinguistics, which form the foundation for this project, are starting to yield promising results, and the infrastructure of Nederlab, on which this project will be built, has just been completed. Keywords: language change, language standardization, language prescription, language use, newspapers 1e. Domain x Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH/SGW) ☐ Science (ENW) ☐ Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES/TTW) ☐ ZonMw 1f. Main field of research Code Main field of research 30.15.00 Morphology, grammar and syntax Other fields of research (if applicable) 30.30.00 Dialectology, linguistic geography, sociolinguistics 30.45.00 Computational linguistics and philology

1g. Starting and end date Anticipated starting date for your project: 1 October 2019 Anticipated end date for your project: 1 October 2023 1h. Public summary Spread the new(s). Understanding standardization of Dutch through 17th-century newspapers Hoe zijn de normen en regels voor het zich ontwikkelende Standaardnederlands in de 17e eeuw verbreid en hoe raakten ze algemeen aanvaard? Dit project onderzoekt deze vragen aan de hand van een 17e-eeuws krantencorpus van 17 miljoen woorden dat onlangs via crowdsourcing beschikbaar is gekomen. Spread the new(s). Understanding standardization of Dutch through 17th-century newspapers How were the norms and rules for Standard Dutch evolving in the 17th century disseminated and how did they become generally accepted? Our project investigates these questions on the basis of a 17th-century newspaper corpus of 17 million words that has recently become available through crowdsourcing. A2. Project team composition

Main applicant Title, first name, surname Affiliation Role prof.dr. Nicoline van der Sijs Meertens Institute / Radboud University,

Dept Modern Languages and Cultures project leader, promotor

Other team members Title, first name, surname Affiliation Role NN to be appointed at Meertens Institute PhD student prof.dr. Helen de Hoop Radboud University, Dept of Language and

Communication co-promotor

prof.dr. Lieselotte Anderwald Kiel University, English Dept member advisory team prof.dr. Antal van den Bosch Meertens Institute / Radboud University,

Dept of Language and Communication member advisory team

dr. Evie Coussé University of Gothenburg, Dept of Languages & Literatures

member advisory team

prof.dr. Marjo van Koppen Meertens Institute / Utrecht University, Dept Languages, Literature and Culture


Marten van der Meulen, PhD student

Radboud University, CLS, PhD student member advisory team

prof.dr. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade

Leiden University, English Sociohistorical Linguistics


dr. Freek Van de Velde KU Leuven, Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics


prof.dr. Rik Vosters Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Linguistics and Literary Studies


dr. Ton van der Wouden Meertens Institute / Leiden University member advisory team

B1. Scientific quality

1. Research problem, main research question and hypothesis During the Renaissance, standard languages were devised all over Western Europe. This was the result of a growing need for language uniformity felt by influential portions of society. Haugen (1966) provides a theoretical framework for describing language standardization. He distinguishes four stages:

(1) selection of a language variety that forms the basis for the standard; (2) codification of forms, through dictionaries, grammars, spelling guides, etc.; (3) elaboration of function, so that the standard language can be used in all domains of life; (4) acceptance and use of the established norms by the community, i.e. implementation.

Selection (1) and codification (2) refer primarily to the form of language, while elaboration (3) and acceptance (4) refer to the function of language. The ideal of a standard language may be defined as minimal variation in form with maximal variation in function, which is achieved by suppressing optional variability in language (Milroy & Milroy 2012: 6). The processes of selection (1) and acceptance (4) occur in society and are thus sociolinguistic phenomena; codification (2) and elaboration (3) involve the language itself directly. Haugen (1966: 933) draws up the following matrix: Form Function Society Selection Acceptance Language Codification Elaboration Milroy & Milroy (2012) extend Haugen’s model (cf. Tieken-Boon Van Ostade 2008, 2012) and discern two periods in the functional expansion of a standard language: (1) the period of standardization, and (2) the period of maintenance and prescription. When we apply these frameworks to Dutch, we find that the first period started in the 16th century in the southern provinces (Van den Branden 1967) and, because of political, economic and cultural reasons, moved to the Dutch Republic in the 17th century, where the cultivated Holland diaIect was selected as the model for standard Dutch. Codification took place via reference works published in the Dutch Republic. The first period ended in 1804/1805 with the publication of the first officially sanctioned spelling guide and grammar. The stages of selection and codification in the first period have been fairly thoroughly investigated (see, e.g. Van der Horst 2008; Van der Sijs 2004; Van der Wal 1995; Willemyns 2003). For Dutch we thus have a clear view of two of the four stages of standardization described by Haugen, both concerned with the form of the standard language. However, the development in the other two stages, elaboration and acceptance, remains unclear. Our proposed research project intends to reveal what goes on in the remaining two stages. Our main research question is:

We will study this question for Standard Dutch, thus filling an important gap in our knowledge. We intend to unravel how the selected language variety (Hollandish) and the codified language forms gained functional expansion or, in the terminology of Milroy & Milroy, diffusion, in the first period of standardization, and became generally accepted as part of the standard Dutch repertoire. Until now, the factors determining this functional expansion of Dutch have not yet been systematically investigated, chiefly because of a lack of relevant research data. Recently, however, a completely new text corpus of manually transcribed 17th-century newspapers became available (Van der Sijs 2019). This unique corpus, containing 17 million words, will be the basis of the proposed research. We hypothesize that newspapers played a crucial role in the expansion of the Dutch written standard language, comparable to the role of the spoken media (radio, television) in the expansion of the Dutch spoken standard language in the 20th century, as demonstrated by Smakman (2006).

Main research question What (socio)linguistic factors are decisive in the functional implementation of a standard language?

The hypothesis will be tested by investigating how the prescriptive rules first formulated and used by literary authors and grammarians were implemented: we expect that in the course of the 17th century (some of) these rules led to a gradual suppression of variability in newspapers, and subsequently also in other text genres. Which of the prescriptive rules were accepted and which were not will help us getting a grip on the (socio)linguistic factors that are decisive in the functional implementation of a standard language. 2. Questions Standardization is implemented by top-down sociolinguistic pressure, applied by the dominant social class, and can thus be considered as a language change from above (Labov 1994: 78). Standardization only affects specific parts of the language such as spelling principles, individual lexical items and salient grammatical variability, i.e. variability that the language users are aware of. So it clearly differs from changes from below, which take place below the level of awareness and/or start in the lower social classes (Labov 1994: 78). In order to answer the main research question, we will investigate the following subquestions:

The answers to these subquestions will enable us to find patterns in the relationship between selected language forms (subquestion 1), arguments motivating these selections (subquestion 2), and actual language use in, on the one hand, newspapers as mass medium (subquestion 3) and, on the other hand, other text genres (subquestion 4). 3. Methodology The research will be conducted using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, following, e.g., Anderwald (2012 & 2016), Poplack & Dion (2009). 3.1 Qualitative research The first step will be to make an inventory of the language phenomena mentioned in the normative literature (subquestion 1), and the arguments used to motivate the selected form (subquestion 2). Such an argument is provided,for instance, by Petrus Leupenius in his grammar from 1653, where the use of double negation en + niet, as in gy en sullt niet dooden ‘thou shall not kill’, is deemed ‘a great abuse’: where two negations meet, they count as confirmation – hence using a logical argument.

Subquestion 1: What language phenomena (spelling, grammar) are standardized, i.e. selected and codified in Renaissance normative literature? Subquestion 2: What arguments are used to motivate the selection and codification of certain forms? Subquestion 3: To what extent do 17th-century newspapers use the preferred language forms mentioned in the normative literature? Subquestion 4: To what extent do text genres like literature, nonfiction, the Dutch Authorized Version and letters use the preferred language forms mentioned in the normative literature?

Hypothesis Newspapers played a crucial role in the functional implementation of the Dutch standard language during the 17th centuryas the first mass medium read by all social classes.

The inventory will be done on the basis of (a) existing studies (e.g. Dibbets 1995, 2003; Van der Sijs 2004; Van der Wal 1995), and (b) primary normative literature written between ca. 1585-1750 (available in DBNL, Nederlab, DAGENTA). This will result in the Dutch NOrmative DatabasE (NODE), containing language data, publications in which these are mentioned, and argumentation used. NODE will be set up in accordance with similar national and international databases, cf. Anderwald 2014, Van der Meulen 2018, the Leiden HUGE-database (2013). Using NODE, we will be able to conclude which parts of the language were regulated, and how uniform the ideal standard language was in this period. Not everybody made the same choice. For instance, some writers advocated the distinction between hun and haer ‘their’, hun referring to male and haer to female persons, but the translators of the Dutch Authorized Version preferred haer in all instances, without further argumentation. NODE will enable us to establish a sociolinguistic weight or profile for each language variable, which will aid in the correct interpretation of the quantitative corpus research. Finally, we will select a set of language phenomena from NODE suitable for quantitative research:

a) the introduction of the new principle of spelling uniformity (write land because of the plural landen), which replaced the phonetic spelling (lant);

b) the degree to which word purism is practiced (in contemporary literature, French and Latin loanwords were rejected; do other genres follow this example?);

c) up to 10 grammatical and morphological peculiarities. Selection criteria will be linguistic (the suitability of the phenomenon for corpus research) and sociolinguistic (based on the NODE database: the arguments used to motivate the selection of the phenomenon, the number of authors mentioning and supporting the phenomenon, and the degree of consensus - ranging from low to high).

3.2. Quantitative research: the corpora The quantitative research will be based on a completely new data set, namely Dutch 17th-century newspapers (Der Weduwen 2017; Van der Sijs 2019; Sanders 2019). These have recently been manually transcribed in a volunteer project led by principal applicant in collaboration with the Royal Library. This Dutch REnaissance NEwspaper corpus (RENEW corpus) contains 17 million words, and is a unique source of information, as newspapers were the first mass medium and were read by all social classes in the Dutch Republic, where literacy was high (Van der Sijs 2019). The language used is thus guaranteed to have reached a wide audience. The newspapers are available from all years between 1618 and 1700, so that the progress of language change can be precisely tracked in the RENEW corpus. A consistent longitudinal corpus of such scope does not exist for any other text genre from this period. This new data source will provide us with a crucial tool for describing and explaining the spread of the standard language in the 17th century. The RENEW corpus will be incorporated into the infrastructure Nederlab, and annotated with lemmatization and part-of-speech, in order to enable precise queries and analyses, relying on the methodological framework for quantitative historical linguistics set up by Jenset & McGillivray (2017). For comparison various subcorpora containing specific genres will be selected from Nederlab (cf. Whitt 2018):

a) samples of literary texts from the 17th century, written by writers such as Hooft, Vondel, Bredero; b) various non-fiction texts; c) egodocuments (Letters as Loot by INT and the Gekaapte brieven from the Meertens Institute, both

from around 1664); d) the Authorized Version of 1637, often considered important for the standardization process (Van der

Sijs 2018); e) small samples of 18th century text corpora used when the results are ambiguous (from earlier

research it appeared that some prescriptive forms were not accepted and diffused until the 18th century; Van der Sijs 2004; Rutten & Van der Wal 2014).

3.3 Quantitative research: the model We will then confront the normative literature with actual language use (subquestions 3 and 4) by examining how language phenomena from NODE are quantitatively distributed throughout the corpora. We assume, following the evolutionary model, that language change proceeds via a so-called S-curve: a change starts

gradually, then proceeds at a much faster rate, and

finally tails off slowly (Figure 1; Kroch 1989; Bailey 1973:77; elaborations in Postma 2010). Following the model of Blythe and Croft (2012: 271), we see evolutionary change as a two-step process: (a) the generation of variation in the replication process, i.e. innovation, and (b) the selection of some variants over others, i.e. propagation or diffusion. In the diffusion process prescriptivism can play a role. We hypothesize that this is the case when the predicted course of an S-curve deviates from the actual course. We will take the model of Van de Velde (2017, see Figure 2) as a starting point, since this model enables visualisations even when the observed data fall in a small segment of the entire S-curve. 3.4. The resulting new insights Combining the results of the quantitative and qualitative research will yield empirical as well as theoretical new insights. Empirically, it will become clear which (socio)linguistic factors were decisive in the first standardization phase of Dutch, what was the weight of the arguments used in the prescriptive literature, and which authors were influential. We will thus discover how the standard language was functionally implemented. Moreover, the results will help refine the theoretical model of standardization from Haugen and the Milroys, and that of historical sociolinguistics (as described in, e.g., Hernández-Campoy & Conde-Silvestre 2012). Recently, the sociolinguistic factors that are thought to be relevant for bottom-up language change and that interact with language rules have been extensively explored on the basis of letters written by different social classes (Elspaß et al. (eds) 2014; Rutten & Van der Wal 2014). Additionally, the results of our research can demonstrate what sociolinguistic factors render top-down changes (in)effective, and under what sociolinguistic circumstances bottom-up changes prevail over top-down changes and vice versa. 4. The innovative character and the expected scientific impact on the research field Until recently, linguists thought that language change develops autonomously, and that prescription or standardization plays a marginal role in the changes in grammar (Bennis 2005; examples in Moschonas 2019). Lately, however, this view has been challenged, due to important new findings (by, e.g., Anderwald 2016, Auer 2006, Bybee 2015, Burridge & Bergs 2016, Geeraerts 2003, Hinrichs et al. 2015, Hubers et al. 2019, Milroy & Milroy 2012, Poplack & Dion 2009, Rutten 2016, Rutten & Vosters 2016, Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2012, Van de Velde 2017). It has become clear that standardization affects language change (Moschonas 2019). However, the research has been almost exclusively focussed on the consolidating period of the 18th century till now (for Dutch especially by Rutten ( e.g. 2019) and Vosters). Our project, however, concentrates on the formative 17th century: the choices made at that period form the foundation of modern Standard Dutch. It will measure what the effect of normative arguments and authoritative works or people is on language use in the first, formative period of the standard language, with the goal of developing a comprehensive model of language standardization. By using an interdisciplinary approach, systematically combining the results of qualitative, sociolinguistic and quantitative research, the project intends to uncover how the Dutch standard language in the Golden Age permeated through text genres and societal layers, what factors were responsible for the

Figure 1: S-curve of language change

Figure 2: Model from Van de Velde 2017

impact of the standard language on language use, and what factors slowed down this impact or even annihilated it. Our research will thus not only explain why (a part of) modern standard Dutch has the form that it has, where the prescriptive rules came from, and how these rules became part of the collective concept of the standard language, but at the same time unravel universal tendencies underlying the process of language standardization. 5. The expected scientific impact on related fields The Dutch Golden Age is an important study of object, not only for linguists, but also for literary scholars, historians and book historians. This project will have practical results from which all these disciplines will benefit: the RENEW corpus and subcorpora will be made available in open access within Nederlab, with linguistic annotations, and newly developed or improved tools for searching, analyzing and visualizing. This enables literary scholars and (book) historians to investigate, e.g., changing concepts, the reception of literary authors or the influence of the Bible. The digital humanities research methods probably profit the most from the project: the project will improve the modeling of language change, and information on how the standard language was shaped and diffused can help find patterns in spelling and grammatical variation and thus be an important aid in improving automatic searches and analyses of 17th-century texts (Reynaert et al. 2012; Schraagen, Dietz & Van Koppen 2018). 6. A description of the urgency of the proposed research Now is exactly the right moment to start this project, since the theoretical models of standardization and historical sociolinguistics that are the core of this project, yield at this time many promising results, and the infrastructure Nederlab, on which this project will be built, has just been finished. Furthermore, a completely new data set of 17th-century newspapers is at our disposal, which has not yet been used for linguistic research, and which comprises the first longitudinal corpus of the 17th century with yearly data. This new data source will provide us with a crucial tool for describing and explaining the spread of the standard language in the formative 17th century. Finally, we can profit from current developments in Digital Humanities within CLARIAH on tools developing and corpus building. 7. Your strategy for realising scientific output (e.g. publications, database, conferences) The project has a strict but realistic planning, as shown in B6 and B7. The first two years the work centers around the data: the compilation of the NODE database and the annotation of the RENEW corpus. This work has a practical output (an open access database and corpus), and simultaneously results in articles describing choices made and results found. In the first year a workshop with the members of the advisory team is anticipated. In the years to follow, the PhD student will visit the foreign members of the advisory team (see B2) for a shorter or longer time, to profit from their knowledge and networks. B2. Embedding, organisation and budget

1. Institutional environment This project will be carried out by a PhD student under supervision of project leader Van der Sijs. The PhD student will be a member of the language variation group of the Meertens Institute and of the Center for Language Studies at Radboud University, and thus be firmly embedded in national research networks. The Meertens Institute is part of the KNAW Humanities Cluster, which has a strong Digital Humanities component and provides the infrastructure for Nederlab and the newspaper corpus. The proposed project complements the PhD project of Marten van der Meulen (Radboud University) ‘Change your language!’, which concentrates on the effects of prescriptivism on the grammar of Dutch in the 20th century. Both projects have the same supervisors (Van der Sijs and De Hoop), and Van der Meulen is a member of the advisory team of the proposed project. In this way interaction and synergy between the two projects is ensured.

2. National and international embedding, quality of the team The other team members have been chosen especially in view of the national and international embedding of the proposed project in current research projects (per member only one project is mentioned): - Lieselotte Anderwald is head of the Kiel research group on 19th-century prescriptive grammar writing; - Antal van den Bosch is a leading expert in language technology and heads the linguistics workpackages of CLARIAH and CLARIAHplus; - Evie Coussé is principal investigator of ‘The rise of complex verb constructions in Germanic’, sponsored by the Swedish Research Council; - Marjo van Koppen supervises the NWO project ‘Language Dynamics in the Dutch Golden Age’; - Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade supervises the NWO project 'Bridging the Unbridgeable: linguists, prescriptivists and the general public'; - Freek Van de Velde supervises the Leuven project ‘How predictable is language change? A quantitative approach’; - Rik Vosters is project leader of the VUB Strategic Research Programme ‘Historical sociolinguistics: towards a new history of Dutch in Flanders’; - Ton van der Wouden is coordinator of Taalportaal. The team members abroad have agreed to accommodate the PhD student within their research group and to share knowledge and experience. Furthermore, the PhD student can profit from the work done by the PhDs in the NWO-projects ‘Going Dutch. The construction of Dutch in policy, practice and discourse (1750-1850)’ and ‘Pardon my French? Dutch-French Language Contact in The Netherlands, 1500-1900’, both led by Gijsbert Rutten, Leiden University. 3. Design of the project, motivation of the requested modules - Personnel: The project will be carried out by one PhD student; the project leader carries out the work within her regular appointment. For technical personnel NWP formation of 0,25 for 24 months is foreseen. This includes technical assistance in selecting and linguistically enriching corpora within Nederlab, developing or adapting tools, and modelling language change. - Material costs: max. € 5.000 will be used by the PhD student for organizing a workshop for the advisory team and invited speakers in year 1 (circa 15 persons), and max. € 5.000 for organizing an international conference in year 3 (circa 25 persons). This includes travel costs within Europe and from US/Canada, hotel accommodations, and travel costs by PhD student for preparatory consultations. - Valorisation: the € 15.000 is intended for the development of the educational module and website ‘Krantentaal vroeger en nu’, mentioned in B3: € 10.000 for technique (building website, search options, annotation tool), € 5.000 for developing content. 4. Short cv of applicant Nicoline van der Sijs studied Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Utrecht, where she worked as researcher till 1990. Between 1990 and 2010 she was an independent researcher. Since 2010 she has been a senior researcher at the Meertens Institute and since 2013 also professor of Historical Linguistics of Dutch at Radboud University, where she supervises 6 PhD students. She is a leading expert in historical linguistics of Dutch, on the use of digital data, and on etymology, and has written over 25 books and hundreds of articles on these subjects. For the current project her publication Taal als mensenwerk: het ontstaan van het ABN (2004) is especially relevant. She was principal investigator of Nederlab (NWO Large), the infrastructure that will be used in the proposed project. She has led or is leading several externally or internally financed projects, such as Emigrant Dutch (Dutch Language Union), two NWO-KIEM projects, with Evie Coussé and Gerlof Bouma ‘The rise of complex verb constructions in Germanic’ (Swedish Research Council), the linguistic case of Amsterdam Time

Machine (CLARIAH), CARE (CurAtion and integration REgional dictionaries; CLARIN). Moreover, she organized two Lorentz workshops. Since 2007 she has led large volunteer groups that have made transcriptions of 130 text editions, e.g. of the Dutch Authorized Version, all available within Nederlab, and of the 17 million RENEW newspaper corpus. She developed various popular open access databases, such as etymologiebank.nl, gekaaptebrieven.nl and electronic Word Bank of Dutch Dialects (www.meertens.knaw.nl/ewnd/). She is editor of the journal Trefwoord and Internationale Neerlandistiek, and monthly contributor to the non-specialist journal Onze Taal. In 2006 she was awarded the Prize for Humanities by the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund. 5. Key publications of applicant 1. Nicoline van der Sijs (2019, accepted). Historische taalkunde en digital humanities: samen naar een mooie

toekomst. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde. 2. Nicoline van der Sijs (2019). Historical linguistics in the Netherlands. Linguistics in the Netherlands 2019. 3. Lo van Driel & Nicoline van der Sijs (2018). Adriaan Kluit. Back to the sources! In: R. Honings, G. Rutten & T.

van Kalmthout (eds), Language, Literature and the Construction of a Dutch National Identity (1780-1830). Amsterdam: AUP, 205-227.

4. M. Jansen, N. van der Sijs, F. van der Gucht, J. de Caluwe (2017). Atlas van de Nederlandse taal. Editie Nederland en Editie Vlaanderen. Tielt: Lannoo.

5. Nicoline van der Sijs (2015). TS Tools: Nederlab voor tijdschriftonderzoek. Ts. Tijdschrift voor tijdschriftstudies 37, 53-62.

B3. Knowledge utilisation

Societal impact The proposed project is relevant for the general public, language centres and education. 1. Raising awareness of the general public Laymen are convinced that the rules and norms of the standard language are carved in stone, and discuss fiercely what they call ‘language mistakes’ and ‘language corruption’, as is evident from letters sent to the journal Onze Taal (and see Milroy & Milroy 2012). Knowledge on how the norms and rules of the standard language were selected and diffused would raise the discussions to a higher level. Furthermore, as Geeraerts (2003) noted, a historical overview of standardization processes, standardization debates, and their relationship with linguistic theorizing, linked to language attitudes will lead to a better understanding of the underlying logic of standardization debates. > Concrete steps by applicant and PhD student: - Quarterly blog-posts on neerlandistiek.nl on the results of the project, and at least once a year a publication targeting the general public (Onze Taal, newspaper) and teachers associations (Vaktaal, Levende Talen); - One presentation at the language festival Drongo. 2. Significance for modern regional language centra The selection and diffusion of Standard Dutch may seem like old news. However, at this very moment a number of regional languages such as Low Saxon, Brabantish, Limburgish and Zeelandish go through a codification process that is similar to that of 17th-century Dutch. In 2018 and 2019 the provincial governments of the Low Saxon speaking provinces and of Limburg have started a discussion with the Dutch government on the status of the regional languages. The regional languages are being codified in, e.g. dictionaries. The use of Limburgish at kindergarten and in primary and secondary education is advocated. Our project can inform policy makers on how codification and functional diffusion has taken place regarding Standard Dutch, and which good and bad practices can be shown from this for the modern situation. > Concrete steps: - At least one presentation for the Stichting Nederlandse Dialecten (Dutch Dialects Foundation), a consultative body for regional policy in which regional policy makers and linguists are united.

3. Impact on education Everbody learns Standard Dutch at school, but in the educational system little to no attention is paid to the question as to how this standard language came about. The result is that applying the rules of the standard language is no more than a trick, which few pupils enjoy. As part of a broader movement that favours language awareness in schoolchildren, we want to invest most of our valorisation time and energy in developing an educational module for pupils that playfully introduces them to older Dutch and language change, while at the same time making them into citizen scientists. > Concrete steps: - Development of an educational module and website ‘Krantentaal vroeger en nu’, based on interesting items (news, advertisements, theft) from the RENEW corpus. On the website, simple tools will be provided for searching and analysing the corpus. This can help interested pupils from all school ‘profiles’ with the writing of their mandatory end paper. To actively engage pupils and to make them aware of language use, norms and change, an annotation tool will be developed with which pupils can annotate specific syntactic categories, such as personal pronouns (hen/hun), relative pronouns (dat/wat), and conjunctions (als, omdat). The tool can be used for class discussions. The result will improve the automatic annotation of the corpus, which contains many errors. Besides, a semantic annotation tool will be provided for recognizing place names and personal names, and categories such as new inventions, thus opening up the Dutch cultural heritage. The educational module will be developed in cooperation with secondary school teachers, who will test the tool in their classes, and with teachers (Peter-Arno Coppen and Marten van der Meulen) and students of the Radboud Docenten Academie. For the technical development of the website and tools, and for assistance with content filling, we have budgeted the sum of € 15.000 (see B.2.3). - Presentation of the website ‘Krantentaal vroeger en nu’ at the conference Het Schoolvak Nederlands (HSN), and publication in Vaktaal or Levende Talen. Previous knowledge utilisation activities Applicant has ample experience in valorisation and a large societal network. As a member of the Meesterschapsteams Nederlands (from 2016-2019) she is well-informed on matterns concerning secondary education. She is editor-in-chief of the newsletter Neerlandistiek voor de klas. In 2018 she developed with Lotte Jensen the website ‘Schatkamer van Nederland: Nationaal erfgoed in de klas’ (https://schatkamervannederland.nl/) with a grant from De Jonge Akademie. She received recognition for valorisation activities: in 2018 the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België awarded the yearly prize for science communication to the Atlas van de Nederlandse taal by M. Jansen, N. van der Sijs, F. van der Gucht & J. de Caluwe, in 2007 and 2011 books edited by applicant received the LOT Populariseringsprijs, and in 2019 this price was awarded to Kristel Doreleijers, Mathilde Jansen and Nicoline van der Sijs for Projectplan Website voor scholieren: Taalkundig onderzoek, wat is dat en hoe doe je dat? Potential users or collaborative partners The NODE database and the RENEW corpus will be useful instruments for humanities scholars from different disciplines and for language technologists. The potential user group of the website and educational module ‘Krantentaal vroeger en nu’ is large: all teachers and students of secondary schools. Applicant can use a large number of channels for dissemination, such as Meesterschapsteams Nederlands, newsletter Neerlandistiek voor de klas, Onze Taal, DOT teachers, Radboud Docenten Academie, and a variety of websites. We intend to approach two parties for future collaboration: (1) the Utrecht group of researchers that developed T-Scan: a new tool for analyzing Dutch text, to investigate whether this tool could in some way be integrated in the educational module for pupils to play with; (2) the Internationale Vereniging voor Neerlandistiek (IVN), so investigate whether the website ‘Krantentaal vroeger en nu’ can be expanded for students of Dutch abroad.

B4. Word count

Number of words in section B1 + B2: 3484 words (max. 3500) Number of words in section B3: 980 words (max. 1000)

B5. Reference list

References Anderwald, L. (2012). Clumsy, awkward or having a peculiar propriety. Prescriptive judgements and language

change in the 19th century. Language Sciences 34, 28–53. Anderwald, L. (2014). Measuring the success of prescriptivism: quantitative grammaticography, corpus

linguistics and the progressive passive. English Language and Linguistics 18: 1-21. Anderwald, L. (2016). Language between description and prescription: verbs and verb categories in nineteenth-

century grammars of English, Oxford: OUP. Auer, A. (2006), Precept and practice. The influence of prescriptivism on the English subjunctive. In: C. Dalton-

Puffer et al. (eds), Syntax, Style and Grammatical Norms. English from 1500-2000, Frankfurt/Bern, Peter Lang, p. 33-53.

Bailey, C-J. (1973). Variation and linguistic theory. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics. Bennis, H. (2005). Standaard als mensenwerk. In: R. van Hout & J. Swanenberg (eds), Geluid waar spraak uit

ontstond. Kru(i/ij)sen door de dialecten. Nijmegen: Radboud University, 19-22. Blythe, R.A. & Croft, W. (2012). S-curves and the mechanisms of propagation in language change. Language 88

(2), 269-304. Branden, L. van den (1967). Het streven naar verheerlijking, zuivering en opbouw van het Nederlands in de 16e

eeuw. Arnhem: Gysbers & van Loon. Burridge, K. & Bergs, A. (2016). Understanding language change. London: Routledge. Bybee, J. (2015). Language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DAGENTA (Database Geschiedenis Nederlandse Taalkunde) (2018), ed. N. van der Sijs,

https://cls.ru.nl/dagenta/. Dibbets, G.R.W. (1995). De woordsoorten in de Nederlandse triviumgrammatica. Amsterdam. Dibbets, G.R.W. (2003). Taal kundig geregeld. Amsterdam: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU; Münster: Nodus

Publikationen. Elspaß, S., Langer, N., Scharloth, J. & Vandenbussche, W. (eds) (2007). Germanic language histories ‘from

below’ (1700–2000). Berlin & New York: de Gruyter. Geeraerts, D. (2003). Cultural models of linguistic standardization. In: R. Dirven, R. Frank & M. Pütz (eds),

Cognitive models in language and thought. Ideology, metaphors and meaning. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 25-68.

Haugen, E. (1966). Dialect, language, nation. American Anthropologist 68, 922-935. Hernández-Campoy, J.M. & Conde-Silvestre, J.C. (eds) (2012). The handbook of historical sociolinguistics, NY:

Wiley. Hinrichs, L., Szmrecsanyi, B. & Bohmann, A. (2015). Which-hunting and the Standard English relative clause.

Language 91(4): 806-836. Horst, J. van der (2008). Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse syntaxis, Leuven: Universitaire Pers. Hubers, F., Trompenaars, Th., Collin, S., Schepper, K. de & Hoop, H. de (2019). Hypercorrection as a by-product

of education. Applied Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amz001 HUGE-database, Hyper Usage Guide of English database (2013), Straaijer, R.: http://huge.ullet.net/ Jenset, G.B. & McGillivray, B. (2017). Quantitative historical linguistics. A corpus framework. Oxford: OUP. Kroch, A. (1989). Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change, 1, 199-

244. Labov, W. (1994). Principles of linguistic change. Volume 1. Internal factors. Oxford UK & Cambridge USA:

Blackwell. Meulen, M. van der (2018). Do we want more or less variation? The comparative markers als and dan in Dutch

presciptivism since 1900. Linguistics in the Netherlands 79-96. Milroy, J. & Milroy, L. (2012). Authority in language. Investigating language prescription and standardisation.

London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Moschonas, S.A. (2019 to appear), Correctives and language change. In: M. Sekali et al. (ed.), Linguistic

correction/correctness, Paris.

Poplack, S. & Dion, N. (2009). Prescription vs. praxis: the evolution of future temporal reference in French. Language, 85 (3): 557-587.

Postma, G. (2010). The impact of failed changes. In: C. Lucas, S. Watts, A. Breitbarth & D. Willis (eds), Continuity and change in grammar, Amsterdam: Benjamins, 269-302.

Reynaert, M., Hendrickx, I. & Marquilhas, R. (2012). Historical spelling normalization. A comparison of two statistical methods: TICCL and VARD2. In: F. Mambrini et al. (eds), Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Annotation of Corpora for Research in the Humanities (ACRH-2), Lisbon: Edicoes Colibri, pp. 87-98.

Rutten, G., Vosters, R. & Vandenbussche, W. (eds) (2014). Norms and usage in language history 1600–1900. A sociolinguistic and comparative perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Rutten, G. & M. van der Wal (2014). Letters as Loot. A sociolinguistic approach to seventeenth and eighteenth-century Dutch. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Rutten, G. (2016). Standardization and the myth of neutrality in language history. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 242: 25-57.

Rutten, G. & Vosters, R. (2016). Prescriptivism between the devil and the deep blue sea: Competing language norms in the Southern Low Countries (1815−1830). In: I. Tieken-Boon van Ostade & C. Percy (eds), Prescription and tradition in language. Establishing standards across time and space. Bristol / Buffalo: Multilingual matters, 137-151.

Rutten, G. (2019). Language Planning as Nation Building. Ideology, policy and implementation in the Netherlands, 1750–1850. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Sanders, E. (2019), ‘Een mooie mengelmoes’, in: NRC Handelsblad 27-2-2019: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/02/27/een-mooie-mengelmoes-a3655475

Schraagen, M.P., Dietz, F.M. & van Koppen, J.M. (2018). Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Annotation of 17th Century Dutch Letters. In: N. Calzolari (ed.), Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation. Miyazaki, Japan: European Language Resources Association (ELRA), pp. 1146-1152.

Sijs, N. van der (2004). Taal als mensenwerk: het ontstaan van het ABN. Den Haag: SDU. Sijs, N. van der (2018), ‘1637 - De mythes rond de Statenbijbel’, in: Wereldgeschiedenis van Nederland, red. L.

Heerma van Voss, M. ’t Hart e.a., Amsterdam: Huygens Instituut, 242-247. Sijs, N. van der (2019). De wereld in kranten. In: M. van Oostendorp & N. van der Sijs (2019), ‘Een mooie

mengelmoes’. Meertaligheid in de Gouden Eeuw. Amsterdam: AUP. Smakman, D. (2006). Standard Dutch in the Netherlands. A sociolinguistic and phonetic description. Utrecht:

LOT. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, I.M. & Nevalainen, T. (2008), Standardisation. In: R. Hogg & D. Denison (eds), A

History of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 271-311. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, I.M. (2012), The codification of English in England. In: R. Hickey (ed.), Standards of

English. Codified varieties around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 34-54. Velde, F. van de (2017). Understanding grammar at the community level requires a diachronic perspective.

Evidence from four case studies. Nederlandse Taalkunde 22 (1): 47-74. Wal, M.J. van der (1995). De moedertaal centraal. Standaardisatie-aspecten in de Nederlanden omstreeks 1650.

Den Haag: SDU. Weduwen, A. der (2017). Dutch and Flemish newspapers of the seventeenth century, 1618-1700, Leiden: Brill. Willemyns, R. (2003). Dutch. In: A. Deumert & W. Vandenbussche (eds), Germanic standardizations. Past to

present. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 93-125. Whitt, R.J. (ed.) (2018). Diachronic corpora, genre, and language change. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John

Benjamins.

B6. Planned deliverables

Deliverable year 1 Deliverable year 2 Deliverable year 3 Deliverable year 4

Organization workshop of advisory team

Presentation for advisory team

Article on design and results NODE database

Popularizing publication and 4 blogs (Onze Taal, Neerlandistiek.nl)

National lecture (LREC/CLIN/GTB)

Article on design of RENEW corpus and subcorpora


International lecture

Organize international conference

Article as result of international lecture and conference


Presentation for the Stichting Nederlandse Dialecten


Educational module ‘Krantentaal vroeger en nu’


PhD dissertation

NODE database in open access

RENEW corpus and subcorpora in Nederlab

Adapted tools in CLARIAH

Model of Language standardization

B7. Work plan

The intended starting date is 1-10-2019, the end date is 1-10-2023.

Executor Year 1 (Subquestion 1)

Year 2 (Subquestion 2)

Year 3 (Subquestions 3, 4)

Year 4 (Synthesis)

PhD student

Literature study

Design of NODE database

Developing annotation scheme

Organize workshop of advisory team Presentation for advisory team

Data selection and filling of NODE database

Article on design and results NODE database

Write popularizing publication and blogs

PhD courses, LOT summerschool

Literature study

Continue work on NODE database, select language phenomena for corpus research

Preparing and enriching RENEW corpus and subcorpora

National lecture

Article on design of RENEW corpus and subcorpora

Visit member advisory team abroad


Presentation at DRONGO

PhD courses

Making frequency distributions of language items and model language change, based on corpus research



Organize international conference

Article as result of international lecture and conference

Start on development educational module


PhD courses

Interprete findings

Rewrite the three articles into dissertation chapters

Presentation of theoretical results at international conference


Finish and present educational module


Write synthetic and theoretical last dissertation chapter

NWP Technical assistance in selecting and enriching corpora, developing tools

Technical assistance in modelling language change based on the corpus research

Project leader

Supervision of project






Presentation for the Stichting Nederlandse Dialecten

DOT and educational module



DOT and educational module

Advisory team

Attend workshop to advise PhD student

(individual members) Receive and train PhD student



Section C: Data management, statements and signature

C1. Data management C1a. Will data be collected or generated that are suitable for reuse? x Yes C1b. Where will the data be stored during the research? During the course of the research project, the data will be stored on the Meertens Institute network drive. This server is continuously available, secured according to present-day standards, and backups are made daily on servers in other locations. C1c. After the project has been completed, how will the data be stored for the long-term and how will the data be made available for use by third parties? For whom will the data be accessible? After the completion of the research project, the NODE database will be archived in open access at DANS for at least 10 years. The NODE database, the adapted tools and the algoritmic model of language standardization will be in deposited at the Meertens Institute, which is a CLARIN Center and part of CLARIAH(plus). The (enriched) RENEW corpus and subcorpora and the added metadata will be added to Nederlab. C1d. Which facilities (ICT, (secure) archive, refrigerators or legal expertise) do you expect will be needed for the storage of data during and after the research? Are these facilities available? DANS, CLARIN Center Meertens Institute and Nederlab are already available and expert in archiving and storing of data and metatadata and making these accessible through open access.

Section D: Statements

D1. Statements D1a. Eligibility: conditions for applying x According to the formal eligibility criteria, the main applicant and any co-applicants are no longer

eligible as applicants in the NWO Talent Scheme (Vernieuwingsimpuls). x The main applicant and any co-applicants will not submit a (pre-)proposal in one of the following other

funding instruments: PhDs in the Humanities, Replication Studies, during the selection phase as well as the period in which the board is deciding whether or not to award the current application funding.

x The main applicant and any co-applicants have an appointment at their host institute for the duration of the application process and the project that is applied for. (See confirmation letter by director Meertens Institute)

D1b. Statements of the main applicant x By submitting this document, I declare that I and all individuals involved in this proposal satisfy the

nationally and internationally accepted standards for scientific conduct as stated in the Netherlands Code of Conduct for Scientific Practice 2014 (Association of Universities in the Netherlands)

x By submitting this document, I declare that I follow the NWO policy on data management. x I have completed this form truthfully. Name: Nicoline van der Sijs Place: Amsterdam Date: 5 March 2019 Please submit this application form to NWO in PDF format, via the ISAAC system. Do not use any security locks or bookmarks in the PDF file. For any technical questions regarding submission, please contact the ISAAC helpdesk ([email protected]).

https://www.nwo.nl/en/policies/open+science/data+management

mailto:[email protected]

Documents

Section A: General information › cms › images › vacatures › Full...Section A: General information A1. Administrative details 1a. Main applicant Title(s), initials(s), surname